Returning safely to England after the dramatic capture of Martinque, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho finds an all too brief respite from war and politics in the arms of his mistress Catherine Somervell. But the shadow of a new conflict already darkens the horizon. The old enemy, France, forges an uneasy alliance with America - threatening the safety of British trade routes. Although ordered immediately to the Indian Ocean, for the first time Bolitho's thoughts are not of glory but his own - and the Navy's - past. Both Nelson and Collingwood died in their country's service. For the navy's newest Admiral, is there life beyond the sea itself? Views: 15
The Hells Angels. The Bandidos. Asian triads. Russian mobsters and corrupt cops. Even the KKK. Just part of a day's work for Alex Caine, an undercover agent who has seen it all. Alex Caine started life as a working-class boy who always thought he'd end up in a blue-collar job. But after a tour in Vietnam and a stretch in prison on marijuana-possession charges, he fell into the cloak-and-dagger world of a contracted agent or "kite": infiltrating criminal groups that cops across North America and around the globe were unable to penetrate themselves. Thanks to his quick-wittedness and his tough but unthreatening demeanor, Caine could fit into whatever unsavory situation he found himself. Over twenty-five years, his assignments ran the gamut from bad-ass bikers to triad toughs. When a job was over, he'd slip away to a new part of the continent or world, where he would assume a new identity and then go back to work on another group of bad guys.... Views: 14
SUMMARY:
Amid rumours of a French armada massing in the Mediterranean, Commodore Bolitho must seek out the enemy. A fleet, even a nation could depend on his decisions and he accepts the challenge as the price of his career. Views: 14
In the late 1990s in Poughkeepsie, NY, the bodies of prostitutes were piling up. Lt. Bill Siegrist knew a serial killer was preying on the women. Determined to stop any further killing, Siegrist followed a trail that led him to Kendall Francois, a middle school monitor with the nickname Stinky, because of his slovenly hygiene. When Francois was finally arrested for his crimes, police found seven bodies in the attic and crawl space of his house, with one woman still missing. Views: 13
A riveting true account of gold rush fever in mid-nineteenth-century America, rich with the thrilling exploits of daring fortune seekers and dangerous outlaws America was never the same after January 24, 1848. It was on that day that a carpenter named James Marshall discovered a tiny nugget of gold while building a sawmill at Sutter's Fort, just east of Sacramento, California. Marshall's find ignited a fever the nation had never known before, drawing people from all over the country to the West Coast with high hopes of getting rich quick. Over the next six years, three hundred thousand prospectors raced to the California gold fields to make their fortunes, leaving their lands and families behind in order to chase a dream of easy wealth, but all too often encountering a reality of lawlessness, disease, cruelty, and death. A former columnist for the New York Times, author Fred Rosen takes readers back to the seminal moment when the American dream... Views: 13
In March 1808, as Napoleon holds Portugal and threatens his old ally Spain, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho is dispatched once more to the Cape of Good Hope to establish a permanent naval force there. Setting aside his bitter memories and the anguish of a friendship betrayed, Bolitho takes passage in the ill-fated Golden Plover. With him sail others commanded by duty and lured by danger - and those who wish only to escape. But when shipwreck and disaster overtake the Golden Plover off the desolate coast of Africa, neither the innocent nor the damned are spared. Beyond the tortured hell of the reef, Bolitho's battle begins - to summon the survivors' last reserves of courage and of hope.Review“One of our foremost writers of naval fiction.”–Sunday TimesAbout the AuthorDouglas Reeman (Alexander Kent) did convoy duty in the Atlantic, the Arctic and the North Sea. He has written over thirty novels under his own name and more than twenty bestselling historical novels featuring Richard Bolitho under the pseudonym Alexander Kent. Views: 13
The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer (who Mark Twain met during his brief tenure as a California newspaper reporter), told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist on the loose in mid-nineteenth century San Francisco. When 28-year-old San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer at San Francisco's steam baths in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. As Twain steamed, played cards, and drank beer with Sawyer (a Volunteer firefighter, Customs Inspector, and local hero responsible for having saved ninety lives at sea), he had second thoughts about Shirley Tempest, his proposed book about a local girl firefighter, and began to envision a novel of wider scope. Twain learned that a dozen years earlier the eighteen-year-old New York-born Sawyer had been a "Torch Boy," one of the young men who raced ahead of the volunteer firemen's hand-drawn... Views: 12
Winner of a Northern Writers AwardThese are the last days of Raoul Moat.Moat was the fugitive Geordie bodybuilder-mechanic who became notorious one hot July week when, after killing his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend, shooting her in the stomach, and blinding a policeman, he disappeared into the woods of Northumberland, evading discovery for seven days—even after TV tracker Ray Mears was employed by the police to find him. Eventually, cornered by the police, Moat shot himself.Andrew Hankinson, a journalist from Newcastle, re-tells Moat's story using Moat's words, and those of the state services which engaged with him, bringing the reader disarmingly close at all times to the mind of Moat. It is a reading experience unrelieved by authorial distance or expert interpretation. The narrative Hankinson has woven is entirely compelling, even if Moat's weaknesses are never far from sight, requiring the reader to work out where they should stand. Views: 11
SUMMARY:
Spring, 1802. The Peace Treaty of Amiens, signed only a few weeks earlier, is showing signs of collapse. Britain and France wrangle over the return of colonial possessions won and lost during the war. Views: 11
From Publishers Weekly In this affecting, if oddly flat, crime novel from Edgar-winner Cook (The Chatham School Affair), Eric Moore, a prosperous businessman, watches his safe, solid world disintegrate. When eight-year-old Amy Giordano, whom Eric's teenage son, Keith, was babysitting, disappears from her family's house, many believe Keith is an obvious suspect, and not even his parents are completely convinced that he wasn't somehow involved. As time passes without Amy being found, a corrosive suspicion seeps into every aspect of Eric's life. That suspicion is fed by Eric's shaky family history-a father whose failed plans led from moderate wealth to near penury, an alcoholic older brother who's never amounted to much, a younger sister fatally stricken with a brain tumor and a mother driven to suicide. Not even Eric's loving wife, Meredith, is immune from his doubts as he begins to examine and re-examine every aspect of his life. The ongoing police investigation and the anguish of the missing girl's father provide periodic goads as Eric's futile attempts to allay his own misgivings seem only to lead him into more desperate straits. The totally unexpected resolution is both shocking and perfectly apt.
From Booklist Cook's latest is proof that he is maturing into a gifted storyteller. An eight-year-old girl is missing. The police quickly zero in on her baby-sitter, Keith Moore. Keith's parents proclaim his innocence, but his father, Eric, has his own secret doubts. The way the author tells the story, it really doesn't matter whether Keith is guilty or not; what matters is the way the Moore family slowly disintegrates, as his parents deal in their own ways with the possibility that their son may be a monster. The novel is narrated by Eric; perhaps the story might have been slightly more effective if it were told in the third person, so we could watch Eric fall apart (rather than listen to him tell us about it), but that's nit-picking. In terms of its emotional depth and carefully drawn characters, this is one of Cook's best novels. Views: 10
February 1806: Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho carries the news of Trafalgar to southern Africa, where he is to aid British ground forces in any way he can to retake Cape Town from the Dutch. Impatient to be home, Bolitho decides yet again that the boldest measures are best, and proves to the army that brave men do not die in vain. Views: 10
From corporate raider to daddy-in-trainingA family was the last thing workaholic Brady Ward had ever planned on. So after eight years abroad, he was shocked when a blast from his passionate past walked into his office--and informed him that he was a daddy. Now he was faced with a choice: to keep climbing the ladder of success, or build a life with the daughter he left behind.Maggie Brown wanted their little girl to know her father, but bringing a man as ambitious as Brady into their lives was a huge risk, one she wasn't sure she should take for Amber or herself. Because even after eight years, he still got her heart racing like no one else. Yet would he really give up the corporate lifestyle in the big city for life in a sleepy small town? Maybe if he realized that family was a gift that only came along once in a lifetime.... Views: 10
